Kalle Reichelt

Karl Ludvig Reichelt, known as Kalle Reichelt, was a Norwegian medical researcher and alternative medicine practitioner, born in 1933 and died in 2016. He earned his medical doctorate at the University of Oslo in 1972 with a thesis on anionic acids, peptides and acid-soluble proteins from brain tissue, and he worked as a senior researcher and adviser at the Pediatric Research Institute at what is now Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet, from 1972 to 2012. He received the gold King's Medal of Merit in 2004. He was best known for the controversial and unproven claim that opioid-like peptides released from casein and gluten, the casomorphins and gluten exorphins, are causally linked to psychiatric disorders including autism, ADHD, depression and schizophrenia, and for recommending gluten-free, casein-free diets as treatment. His opioid excess theory has not been validated within mainstream medicine, and the record of that dispute is part of his place in the history of alternative medicine.